Sunday, October 24, 2010

Laundry...How we do it all







I came out of my room this am and the boys were ironing their clothes for church :) I love that they can do all the domestic chores equally like their sisters. We have no big issues with our laundry and you notice the emphasis was on how WE do it. Our children are required to bring their dirty clothes to these hampers . They are mostly empty because the kids have not changed into their pjs tonite but usually every nite they are overflowing...We have a rule you wear pants for 2 days (unless they are dirty ) and we wear our pjs more than one nite. We only change our towels once a week....We wash our bed linens once every 2 to 3 weeks -
We have a chore chart that includes someone taking all the clothes down to the laundry room in the am., a person who is in charge of keeping all the clothes going thru - from washer to dryer and carrying them up to our king size bed... where a pile or mountain is made by the afternoon. Then the folding clothes crew ( 4 people) fold clothes and places them in the kids rooms where they belong... then at nite when Paul and I tuck in kiddos you have to have put all your clothes away... If they are left out we will either ask you to do it or if you need multiple reminders we quietly collect them into a black trash bag and you might not get them back for days, weeks or months. Usually with one time of putting them in a trash bag that stays in our closet gets them over the lack of being able to get their clothes in the proper places ( either drawers or hampers). If you are given someone elses shirt or clothing item it is your responsiblity to find out who it belongs to and give it to them- so an excuse of ," It's not mine " does not allow you to throw it on the floor...
With this system we have no issues with the kids and our laundry. Our chore teams rotate weekly... so everyone gets a chance to do it. We even have 1 person a week who is responsible for ironing daddy's shirts or pants that get wrinkled . We keep a basket under the ironing board to put his clothes in that need ironing... and this is done on Wed. and Sat. am...with an empty basket left for the next person...

3 comments:

junglemama said...

What great ideas! Thanks!

Difference2This1 said...

Thanks for sharing!! I was laughing- we do the "bag in Mom and Dad's closet" full of stuff we collect from various infractions (clothes not put away or clean clothes I washed hidden in closet corners, loss or privledges of fun personal items, not putting personal stuff away after being asked over and over, etc). I get sick of the bags in my closet sometimes though because we got a couple of really stubborn kids that wait several weeks to try to earn things back!! :)

The Via Colony said...

You all are AMAZING, Mrs. Briggs! I love your line of pumpkins too:)